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Kate Bowler doesn’t believe everything happens for a reason. In fact, she takes umbrage at the aphorism, which she cheekily appropriated for the title of her 2018 New York Times
bestselling memoir, adding the subtitle “And Other Lies I’ve Loved.” (Everything Happens, a popular podcast, soon followed.) Three years earlier, at the age of 35, the associate professor of American religious history at Duke University was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer, upending the life she shared with her husband Toban and their newborn son Zach. Bowler rallied—and thrived—overcoming a two-year survival prognosis and discovering that she could find…